Warm Gallifreyan Night
by CosmicSyzygy
Summary: The Doctor returns to Gallifrey, his mind heavy with the recent loss of his dear friend and love, Grace Holloway.
1. Part 1

He lay back in the silvery grass, putting his arms behind his head. A slight breeze blew through the curls around his forehead. The second sun had just set beyond the distant ice-capped mountain peaks. It was a warm Gallifreyan night.

This was the part he enjoyed the most. As the bright-burning sun faded, so did the red and orange hues of the daytime sky, revealing a night sky that would be difficult for any other planet or moon to rival. The combination of a strong magnetic field and a quantum force field erected by the ancient Time Lords provided double protection against most harmful forces of the universe – and the most spectacular never-ending meteor shower. The sky was full of shooting stars, each streaking across the sky as if in a race to see who could reach the other side before burning up completely. Very few won, but whenever one did reach the finish line, the Doctor felt a need to congratulate them under his breath.

On this particular night, he sighed to himself, trying to take in the beauty of the night yet still somewhat troubled by the recent happenings in his life. They weighed on his mind like things usually do. In his gut, he felt a slight ache of longing and regret, but to that he paid that no mind. After hundreds of years of losing the people most dear to him, he should be used to this. And perhaps he thought he was.

But this night was still fresh with the loss of his dear friend Grace Holloway. He couldn't remember how long it had been since it had happened. Days? Weeks? Months? Time blended together as it usually does for him, but in his mind the happenings of that last day were but minutes ago. Those last moments played over and over again in his mind, cruelly taunting him with each horrible image seared into his brain.

He had spent an indefinite amount of time afterward jumping from barstool to barstool to drink away his sorrows. This was a relatively new thing in his book. While he would occasionally partake in the vice of drinking and drunkenness for the purpose of gaiety in the past, he was usually the type to soberly deal with his ails. Not this time. He couldn't quite put his finger on why. Perhaps it was to do with this last regeneration. In this body, he seemed to feel emotions more acutely than he ever had before. In his previous incarnations, he had been able to deal with problems of an emotional nature more coolly and composed. Now he was satisfied if he could just convincingly fake it. Perhaps he had been becoming more human over the years and he hadn't even noticed it until now. The amnesia following his regeneration simply took away all his remaining inhibitions, allowing him to fully express who he was supposed to be. He even kissed a human woman. He kissed Grace. And he liked it.

"So you're sort of like Mr. Spock then?" she chuckled lightheartedly one afternoon over a cup of tea in her kitchen. It was probably gone October at that point, several months (for her) following their incredible New Year's adventure. He made a point of dropping in on her from time to time after she decided to stay rather than travel the universe with him. She had made her choice, and he secretly thought that she probably made the right one.

"No… I wouldn't quite say that," he blushed, a little embarrassed at her comparison. He remembered the first time he ever saw an episode of Star Trek. He had been travelling with Ben and Polly at the time, watching it on a little black and white antique of a television. Being an old man at the time, he fell asleep halfway through, although he never did forget the comfortable coolness of the half-Vulcan, half-human Chief Science Officer Spock.

But he found that as the stories of Mr. Spock progressed over the years, they wrote him to be less of the Vulcan he was supposed to be and more of the human he was trying to fight becoming. This both intrigued and frightened the Doctor in ways that he couldn't quite understand.

"I'm not exactly genetically human at all," he continued to tell her, "but rather my mother happens to have human parentage. She had become fully Gallifreyan long before I was born."

Grace considered questioning how such a thing could be possible, for a human to achieve Time Lord existence. The possibility fascinated her, especially considering her medical background, but she chose not to ask him now. Perhaps she could try asking him again in the future when his face wasn't bright red. Instead she reached out her hand to touch his, smiling warmly, and within his chest he felt his hearts begin to simmer.

She never got the chance to ask him.

He frowned up at the night sky now. Following the bouts of heavy drinking and severe depression he had found himself in, he eventually found it wise to clean himself up and pay a visit back home. Little had changed since the days of his childhood. The house he grew up in was just a bit quieter, as were the hills where he now rested his weary body and mind.

He had memories of coming up here as a young boy with his father. This was before he had gone off to the Academy. This was even before he knew much of anywhere besides the small village where he spent his early childhood. His world was so small and the Gallifreyan night sky seemed so large – so endless – and it was. Space is big. The Doctor eventually went out to explore all of it, travelling from one side of the Universe to the next, determined to see it all. Every last nook and cranny. And at this point in his life, he finally felt that he had seen enough. He gazed up at the sky again, with much older eyes, and wished it could be big again.

He also wished he could hear the voice of his father once more, pointing out the various stars and planets in Gallifrey's night sky, telling him stories all about the different places he had been to in his time. His father made everything seem like magic, every white pinprick in the sky like an adventure waiting to happen. He wondered what his father would think of the man that he has become.

He didn't cry when his father died. He didn't cry at his funeral. He mourned quietly and privately, as was the Gallifreyan way to pay respect to those who had passed. His mother, however, could barely contain herself. She spent days on end alone in her bedroom, weeping until she could cry no longer. It broke his hearts to see his mother so depressed, but it was also his duty to reassure the community that all was well. He did what his father would have wanted him to do.

But now…

Now, he was properly a mess.

But why? Because one of his best friends had died before his own eyes? Because she didn't just come back to life again like she did the first time? Because it was entirely his own fault that her life and her existence was no more? Why?

Was it possibly because… he had loved her?


	2. Part 2

Later that night, the Doctor returned to the place that he had once upon a time called home. Nestled between two peaked mountains and overlooking the great Cadonflood River, it had an ancient and yet timeless feeling to it. He had always been somewhat aware of its place in the universe. For thousands of years, it had housed his family. Many proud generations had lived there before his own, and he felt the gravity of its importance even as a child. _'Theta,_' his father had told him every so often while growing up, _'One day you will feel the same pride that I do whenever you look at your own family, and only then will you understand the significance of the name that you were born with._' He still had yet to reach that day.

The door opened with a creak, letting the mild night air sweep across the floor of the kitchen. He looked around in the dim light, surveying the interior of the house. Little had changed since he last visited years ago. Things had been rearranged here and there, less durable items replaced from the wear of time, but it was still very much the same as when he was a child.

He reached his hand up to the wall next to the doorway and it began to illuminate underneath with little swirls and stars. They spread themselves in a line horizontally around the room until they reached the opposite side, completing the circle. He could now properly see that the room was empty. His mother must have gone to bed for the night by now. Best not to disturb her until the morning…

The swirls of illumination followed him up the stairs, lighting his way down the small and windowed corridor, up to the door of the room he once had inhabited. Memories flashed back to him of having to reach upward to twist the door handle. It was now at his waist. Pushing inward, he entered the familiar room again.

He sat down on the bed in the corner, taking off his shoes and socks. The sheets seemed to be fresh, so he laid back in them, staring up at the ceiling. A light breeze tapped against the window, but besides that the house was still and silent. Even the house lights had faded and left. He truly felt alone.

So he closed his eyes and saw her face again. All the pain flooded back into him, but this time he took it. It swelled through his hearts, both beating rapidly under the stress. Such a physical response for such a mental and emotional affliction… It was very real and raw and now it erupted throughout his entire body. He saw her face the last time that he had seen her alive. And then, the first time. Hidden behind that surgical mask, he still recognised those eyes. The sounds of opera swirled about him like stars.

"Puccini. Madame Butterfly." His eyes shot open, startling her as he grabbed onto her wrist. "Whatever you are about to do, stop."

"Mr. Smith?" said her voice, sounding utterly muffled and fading in and out, "You're going to be all right."

"No. I am not human. I am not like you!"

Grace smiled. "No one's the same as me, Mr. Smith."

She was right.

"CLEAR!"

He felt another shock shake his frame. He was in a different body. The bright white lights of the operating room crept in and out of his consciousness. He must be dying.

"CLEAR!"

'I must be dying,' he had thought somewhere in the midst of this. 'That's rather unfortunate.'

"CLEAR!"

The same voice pealed out again in his mind. But whose voice was it? Was it Grace's? It could have been anyone's at this point.

"CLEAR!"

Spasms of electricity shot through his body, but all feeling had been numbed by now. All senses were shutting down. His hearts had failed to beat any longer, and in the distance, he heard a deep and sated bonging sound of the ominous sort. At first it echoed throughout his head, and then it became more and more apparent that it was resonating against and off of surfaces of stone and wood. He looked around again and found that he was deep within his TARDIS.

"CLEAR!"

The voice now matched the tone of the cloister bells, singing out their warnings to anyone who was still alive to hear them. In that moment, the Doctor was dying again.

'This seems to be a common theme,' said a soft and sardonic voice deep within him. 'That and the amnesia thing.'

"CLEAR!"

Anyone's voice was now just a whisper in his mind as he felt his soul being ejected and evacuated from his own body. A bright light blinded his exposed eyes, leaving him helpless and trapped as the Master forced his entry. The Doctor could see him in the light, menacing and mad.

"This can't be how it ends," he heard himself say in his own voice. "Stop this! Please!"

He thought of Grace's face, beautiful and serene, gently touching his exposed chest, listening to his heartbeats. He heard Madame Butterfly, and for a fleeting second, he thought he heard it being sung in Grace's own voice, completely flawless. He saw the world come to an end in an instant, and his own existence extinguished as well.

For a moment, everything seemed very still and quiet again, but then he remembered out of confusion that he was still screaming.

"Give me 300! CLEAR!"

His hearts beat once more.

"STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!"

The bright white light flooded back into his mind again for one last hurrah, seeing only an outline of Grace before the light left him completely.

Now he was properly dead. And so was she.

He threw off the heavy metal contraption the Master had fitted over him as he ran down the stairs to her side. Her body limp and lifeless.

But no… she didn't really die then. How did he remember that? He thought harder.

He remembered the Master's eyes, simultaneously snakelike and catlike, as both him and poor Bruce Gerhardt's body were sucked into the Eye of Harmony, surrendering to its unequaled power.

He carried young Lee's body up the stairs, and then Grace's, laying them next to each other, unsure of what to do or how to react, still in a daze. But that wasn't the end of the story. It wasn't the end of her.

The TARDIS, being the wondrous blue box of love and life that she is, granted Grace and Lee their lives back, channeling though souls back through the still open Eye. They blinked and woke up from their slumber, completely unaware of the gravity of the situation. The dead are supposed to stay dead. He knew this, but instead he smiled. And so did she.

"Hello, Grace. Well, how does it feel? To hold back death."

He held her one last time in his arms. One last wonderful embrace that felt like an entire lifetime of love and joy and harmony of their souls.

Then he opened his eyes, the morning sunlight beginning to peak through the length of his bedroom window. It was a new Gallifreyan day.


End file.
